When you’re an airline that receives 35,000 social media inquiries per week, you need a fully engaged team to be able to pull off your commitment “to respond to every user comment or question within 60 minutes” and resolve every issue within 24 hours, but this is exactly what KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is doing. The airline even updates their social media banners every five minutes letting customers know the approximate wait time for a response.

Today, most companies are using social media in some capacity, but very few are anywhere near achieving the full potential. People assume that social media for business purposes are primarily for marketing and recruitment. But, leading organizations like Burberry, Virgin and General Electric are recognizing the positive impact social media can have when it implemented across all departments within the organization. The term Whole Enterprise Social Media means the integrated approach to the use of social media for performance improvement. Though integrated social media systems are available, most companies are still functioning with internal department working in silos and using technology systems specified for a single business purpose. The problem is that this makes communication more difficult and processes very inefficient. For example accounting, sales and marketing are three different areas that likely have overlap of customer and vendor data. Working independently means three different departments are entering the same data, communicating in various capacities and likely not coordinating efforts very well internally.

When you’re a global company with employees stationed around the world it’s easy to assume employees in one country know little to nothing about employees or happenings in other offices, but at Unitron, it’s quite the opposite. According to their global LinkedIn profile, it’s “a great thing to be a part of a culture that thrives on making the unexpected happen, and where team members’ work together to go the extra mile for customers.” The “company that designs and manufactures really great hearing instruments” has more than 20 offices around the world with their corporate headquarters located in Kitchener, Ontario.

Company name: Aldo Industry: Retail Web References: Nation Retail Federation, Salesforce, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Companies are seeking out the expertise of third party social media specialists to help them cultivate a fruitful relationship between their consumers and their brand. Salesforce has been a leader in connecting companies and the customer. An partnership partnership between Aldo and Salesforce.com, was key in facilitating co-creation and dialogue between… Read more »

Organization Name: Bombardier Industry: Aerospace/ Defence Railways If your business is active on social media, then your business should be reporting on all your social media efforts. While reporting on “vanity metrics” on your companies channels, like follows or likes seems like the thing to do, many people tend to confuse this as an achievement versus what it really is… Read more »

Title: Burberry Co-Creation: Designed by the People Industry: Fashion Web References:Burberry, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Wikipedia Burberry is an international luxury fashion house known for their distinctive plaid pattern and signature trench coat. The British icon has a rich history that dates back to 1856. Burberry heavily invested into their digital presence online under the leadership of Angela Ahrendts, former CEO of Burberry from… Read more »

With the US Presidential election fast approaching, there has been an increase in social media tools and metrics being used along side political polls and pundits to predict who will be the next President of the United States. The use of social media to predict the election results is such a hot topic that it was even part of Seth… Read more »